Sorry I didn’t write last week, I decided that it was better to just wait until today instead of making a random mid-week post telling you that I didn’t have any new challenges!

However I did get some stuff done last week! (aside from going to New York, look at the bottom of the post for some photos!)

Prom is coming up next month, and the theme is Masquerade (great theme, right?) and I am very, very excited! A few months ago I found the PERFECT dress at this vintage shop in LA, but it way out of my price range…. like way out of my price range…. like $475 out of my price range…. so I decided to replicate it on my own! With the help of my mother of course…. So last week I went fabric shopping and also started construction on my mask!

We decided to build off of a pre-existing dress instead of making one from scratch, but the mask will be completely my own, which is fun. The dress is going to be a knee-length, really poofy dress (lots and lots of tulle) with 3 layers of textured, mesh-esque fabrics and a TON of appliques on top.

the fabric

We were hoping for something like this in black for the appliques

I was so fortunate to find the right fabrics at S.A.S., they are almost identical to the dress we saw in the vintage shop, and I was so nervous we wouldnt be able to find something close, let alone something similar/better than the original!

The thing that is going to be most challenging is finding appliques, I was looking for a design similar to the design on the right, only in black and silver instead of white…. fat chance, right? Well, if you guys see anything definitely give me a shout out so I know where to look, because so far etsy hasn’t been too helpful…

I also got the base of my mask constructed a few days ago, which meant I got to play with plaster for a few hours, which was… interesting… my eyebrows barely made it out and just for the record, petroleum jelly is a bitch to get out your hair… yeah… how about a photo?

mask: phase one!

Pictured on the left here is the mask in its first phase of completion, it needs to be sanded down and shaped and decorated and whatnot, but its not bad for my first time playing with plaster wrap! Also pictured is my topsy-turvy-tophat, it picked it up in New York to wear to prom, I figured I’m already breaking the rules with a short prom dress, why not make have a little fun, right? Besides, I’m the kind of girl who would wear a mini top-hat in her everyday life, so I think its a purchase well-made!

This week I will be doing more work on the dress and mask, no promises on completion, however I am planning on finishing another scarf this week, a fluorescent orange one no less ^.^

Now for those of you who would like to know what I was up to this last week, I was in New York City with my Musical Theater II class seeing shows and taking in the sights. It was a truly life-changing experience, as corny as that sounds, and I don’t think I could have spent my spring-break any better. I had the privilege of seeing 4 shows, Next to Normal, Hair, God of Carnage, and In the Heights, as well as attending the Stephen Sondheim 80th Birthday Celebration, all of which were amazing, I think God of Carnage was the only one I didn’t cry during, whether out of sheer happiness or heart-wrenching realization that I wasn’t on the stage too. I cannot wait to move there myself, hopefully I’ll be there in the Fall at NYU, but if not then I’ll just have to wait for a bit before I make the big move. I’ll put some pictures of the trip at the bottom!

Thanks all for reading, I’ll post an update later this week if there is anything to report, but if not then I’ll talk you to on monday!

Hey you guys! It’s Monday! Sorry I didn’t get a blog up on Friday, there wasn’t much to report until Saturday (see picture below)

Much to my mother’s dismay I sort of dominated our living space for the vast majority of the weekend… Notice the baking supplies on the counter in the foreground and the sewing supplies on the table in the back.

Yep, I baked a white-chocolate raspberry cheesecake and sewed (with a tremendous amount of help from my mother) a skirt on Saturday. It was very crazy, but a lot of fun!

The cheesecake turned out really, really well (despite the fact that water leaked through the tinfoil and into the bottom of my spring-form pan during the baking process) and got some good reviews from the family, even though they could have been lying to make me feel better about my baking skills (which has happened before, I’ll have to tell you about the peanut-butter-butter-cream-brownie-sandwich fiasco sometime). I guess the only thing that matters is that I enjoyed it, right? And boy did I. ^.^

And I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but it turned out really pretty, regardless of my taste-bias.

In between checking the oven and melting chocolate and making raspberry reductions, I was pinning fabric and troubleshooting my maiden voyage with my sewing machine (gifted to me by the INCREDIBLE Ms. Paula).

Sewing machines are confusing. really confusing, just in case you weren’t informed. Once I got the hang of it I still didn’t really understand what it was doing, I just knew that it was working because it wasn’t falling apart. Mom was an angel during this project, she showed me how to take in the shirt before I made it into the skirt (because I accidentally got an XXL instead of an L…) and then guided the sewing machine while I held the tension on the elastic when working on the waistband.

I think it turned out pretty well for my first major sewing project, it’s not necessarily the most flattering skirt (for my figure) but it turned out looking nice.

It was way harder than I thought it would be though, elastic is not an easy task for one person, especially if you are sewing the elastic in. So don’t be mistaken if you want to give this a shot and think it’ll be easy, because it isn’t!

This Week:

Now here is where I usually tell you what my projects are for this week, but I don’t think that I’m going to be able to get any projects done this week other than packing and seeing shows (somehow I have accrued tickets to a ton of different local shows this past week, in conjunction to going to New York to see a couple of different Broadway shows this weekend… could it be a sign?).

This week I will be knitting a bunch in the airport and whilst flying across the country, and probably adding some buttons to a scarf of mine before I go, but other than that there won’t be anything major, so I think that instead I am going to do a post before I leave on friday that is more about me to give you an idea of who I am and why I’m writing this blog that you are reading (and so on and so forth, yaddah yaddah).

So check back sometime later this week and hopefully there’ll be a post up ^.^

Alright, its monday, which means its time for a new batch of challenges, and I’m really excited. This week I’ll be breaking out the sewing machine for my first big sewing project, and baking a cheesecake (if I can get a spring-form…) for my father’s birthday.

Craft Challenge #3: Shirt Skirt

Cute, right? All I need to do is pick up some elastic and swing by the Goodwill and snag an oversized button-down shirt, which are both pretty darn cheap. I’m really excited to start on this! Now I just have to work on some cute top to go with it!

I’m going to be in New York in a few weeks on a school trip and this just screams high fashion to me, I can’t wait to be walking around in this and some cute heels in Times Square.

Culinary Challenge #2:

Now, I am very torn as to which sort of cheesecake I want to make (if the goodwill gods grant me a spring-form pan in the next two weeks…) so I will leave it up to you guys to help me decide!

And here are our current contenders:

On the left we have our White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake, and on our right the strawberry graham cracker cheesecake.

Both look ridiculous, right? Please, please, please leave a comment and help me make a decision!

Well that is all that I have for you right now, I’ll post links to the recipes and the tutorials at the bottom of the post

Wow, it’s been a busy week, between tweaking the cinnamon roll sugar cookie recipe, battling with embroidery thread for the pincushion, and well.. the rest of my life, my schedule has been jam-packed!

Sorry I didn’t update on friday like I would have liked to, I didn’t have enough time to breathe, let alone write a decent quality post. But I completed my challenges and that is what really matters!

The Pincushion:

This project was a lot simpler than I originally thought it would be, and it would have been even easier if I’d just spent the money and gotten some cotton stuffing to place inside my pincushion. See, I figured I’d go green and reuse some fabric I had lying around as stuffing. And of course I chose to use an old denim pant-leg from some jeans I’d butchered, which made pushing the needle through the pincushion 15 times a real joy. Thank the good lord for thimbles, thats all that I can say, because I would have been in a lot of trouble if I didn’t have one of those. The density of the denim made the wrapping portion really difficult, but despite the pain in the thumb it was to make, I’m really, really happy with my new pin cushion and suggest that you give this a shot, because it’s quick, easy, and freaking adorable! This little guy isn’t going back into the sewing box, he’s chilling on my computer desk (where I do most of my little projects anyways!)

Cinnamon Roll Sugar Cookies:

mmmmm.... cookies...

After three batches of these puppies I think that I’ve finally figured out my favorite way to prepare them. I followed the recipe for the sugar cookie dough that Jenny from the Picky Palate suggested, but even though the recipe called for 6 cups of flour, I found that I couldn’t even begin to work with the dough because it was so sticky. So I had to chill the dough for a bit in the mixing bowl before trying to remove it. I then took the dough and separated it into two sections and put it in the freezer for 1-2 hours so it was nice and chilly. Now the recipe says to separate the dough into quite a few small sections and roll it out, giving you small, well-cooked cookies. I however like big doughy cookies, so I took half of the dough and rolled it into a really large oval. Once buttered/brown-sugared/cinnamoned, I rolled the dough into a really thick log and sliced the cookies very thinly before arranging them onto the trays to put into the oven.

Now, as I mentioned before, I like big, doughy cookies, so I have a tendency to modify temperatures/bake-times when baking. I kept the baking temperature, but instead of keeping the cookies in for 9 to 11 minutes, I baked them for 6 to 7 minutes and let them set on the trays for a good 20 minutes before moving them to a cooling rack. They may be a little too soft right after they bake, but after a night in a ziplock baggie, they will have settled into the perfect consistency, as opposed to being warm and gooey when fresh and then hardening into hockey pucks overnight (which is definitely my experience with most recipes).

Take a look at my previous post for the links to the tutorials mentioned today.

Its Monday, and that means that it is time for a new Craft Challenge!
Since I still have quite a bit of reading to do in my sewing machine manual before I tackle a real sewing project, I figured I’d do something that would assist me in my sewing endeavors from here on out.

Whilst digging through my mom’s old sewing basket I stumbled upon her “pin cushion” which resembled a dusty old patchwork quilt, complete with faded floral designs on navy blue and grey patches. The wicker basket my mother kept her craft supplies in had not protected it well from the elements; time had faded the designs and the ghastly arizona heat had dried the fabric to its breaking point.
So when I stumbled upon this little picture I just about fell in love. Cute, right? I found the link to the tutorial in the Threadbanger Blog Archives, but the link to the tutorial will be at the bottom of the post.

I was pleased to find that I had enough fabric left over from the curtains my mother made for my bedroom a few years back to make a matching pincushion. I have until next monday to finish this project, I’ll keep you posted!

Update on the baking project:

Last night I attempted to make the Cinnamon Roll Sugar Cookies that I linked to in last monday’s post. However, my mother asked me to use up the rest of the store-bought sugar cookie mix that she had purchased a few months back before I baked any from scratch. The box had two different recipes on the back, one for drop cookies and one for cut-out. I followed the cut-out cookie recipe, thinking that it would be the most appropriate for my cookies.
I mixed up the ingredients, chilled them for a bit, and tried to roll half of the dough out, but it wouldn’t hold its shape at all. I was finally able to get everything flat enough and sprinkled on the brown sugar and cinnamon, but I couldn’t roll it into a log. I ended up with this giant crumbly mess of dough and spices that I couldn’t even ball up into drop cookies!

Sounds like a disaster, right?
I scrapped that half of the dough since I couldn’t really salvage it after I’d added the cinnamon&brown-sugar and turned to the remaining half to try and make it work.
I’m going to tell you right now that despite what you might think, adding butter to really crumbly store-bought dough doesn’t really save it. So after trying to patch the dough with 1/3 cup butter, I just decided to add a bunch of brown sugar and cinnamon for cinna-swirl drop cookies.
They didn’t look like pinwheels, but they tasted yummy, so that was awesome.

This blog comes to you in Three Parts:(nerdfighter moment anyone?)First things first:
So this Monday I challenged myself to make a pair of gloves in two weeks. I finished them yesterday….

I gave myself a little too much time on that project, so good news I will be starting another new project this upcoming week!
Now the only problem is deciding what I want to make, which brings me to:

Part Two!
This last week I’ve talked to a lot of people about this blog that I’ve started and the projects that I’m working on, and most people are really nice and at the very least pretend like they are interested in what I’m talking about. However one woman has gone above and beyond to help me in any way she can to make this blog and all of my projects possible.
Ms. Paula, this is a major thank you for the wonderful Singer Sewing Machine you so kindly gave me, that GORGEOUS bright red Farberware Mixer that you found, and the perfect vintage teacups for my windowsill garden that you bought for me. Your gifts are going to make so many projects possible and I cannot thank you enough for your kindness.

Which brings me to Part Three
Now that I have a mixer and a sewing machine I will be a little more equipped to handle some new projects, but they need to be for beginners, especially with the sewing machine.
I need suggestions for beginners sewing projects, whether it be a clothing mod or an easy pattern, it doesn’t matter, I just want some suggestions!

I can’t wait to get started on next weeks projects! I’ll see you guys on Monday ^.^
-Korbe

Alright, well it is monday the fifteenth of February and, as promised, I am starting my first set of challenges.

Craft Challenge: Fingerless gloves

Yesterday, I finished a scarf that I learned to make from the following threadbanger tutorial:

After I was finished, I wanted to make some matching wrist warmers/fingerless mittens, but since I’m a knitting novice I devised a plan to make my own using the stitches I already have learned.

So, I have two weeks to knit the button-up fingerless mittens that match this scarf

The Plan:
knit a long rectangular piece that goes from my knuckles to roughly mid-forearm, leaving a hole for the thumb (using the same technique for button holes) and ending in a series of 4-5 buttons that will close the “glove” around my arm.
What do you think? I don’t see any major flaws in the design, but if you do, please let me know!